Chereads / The Mage Poe / Chapter 5 - Cave bats and fear

Chapter 5 - Cave bats and fear

Walking up the staircase in front of him, Poe got to a hallway. Mushrooms growing orderly by the sides of the hallway. Some way or another it looked naturally created instead of artificially, but some way or another was shaped to look like a hallway from the start.

Walking along the hallway the light slowly disappeared until there was almost no light left in the hallway. Just when the light from the mushrooms was about to die out the hallway stopped.

In front of Poe, a massive cave with a few mushrooms scattered here and there.

The difference was that the mushrooms on the walls of the massive cave was not giving off almost any light. The light of the mushrooms was far from enough to light up the entire cave.

Looking around the cave, Poe saw that the mushrooms got fewer and fewer the closer to the celling of the cave they were. At the celling of the cave, there were no glowing mushrooms whatsoever.

Finding it a little odd that there were no glowing mushroom growing out from the celling, Poe took a closer look at the celling of the cave.

[Cave bat, lvl 4]

[Cave bat, lvl 3]

[Cave bat, lvl…]

The entire celling of the cave was covered in cave bats and to make things worse. To get out of here he could only walk through the cave or go back down the stairs. There was also the giant spiral staircase in the middle of the room, but there were bats sleeping on it.

Feeling the hairs all over his body slowly standing up, Poe picks up his pace hopping to make it through the cave without waking up the bats.

Even if the bats discover little Poe, he at least still has the stick on him. If the cave bats wakes up, at least he can fight back or so thinks Poe. There is hundreds of bats sleeping in the celling and he wants to fight them all with a stick… at least he can dream big.

Walking towards the other side of the cave, Poe came across a skeleton. It looked like a human.

Getting interested in the dead, Poe walked closer to the skeleton. By the side of the skeleton was a rusty shield and sword and it was equipped with what looked like an armor, although there was small bite marks here and there on it.

Looks like whoever this was; he was done in by the bats. Thinking this, Poe started looking towards the bats hanging of the celling with a little more focus in his gaze.

After gazing at the bats for a little longer, he returned his focus to the skeleton. Looking if it might have something of use.

After looking it over all Poe found was a worn down backpack, well at least it does not have some hole in it and it still works great as a bag, Poe thought to himself before leaving the skeleton behind and resuming his journey to the other side of the cave.

Now why did Poe not take the rusty sword? Even if it is rusty, it should still be better than a stick.

Well in Poe's mind, his stick is almighty and he even had the [Stick Mastery] skill, so the stick is the best option.

After he made it to the other side of the cave after around 30 or so minutes, he was shocked to find out that there was no way out of the cave on this side of the cave.

Now his only option left was the staircase in the middle of the room. At least he would know that he was going up if he took that, but then again there was almost a 100 % chance of waking up the sleeping cave bats on his way up.

Making up his mind, Poe walked towards the staircase with his trusty stick in hand. The backpack he picked up early was swung over his left shoulder, so it would not get in his way if the cave bats woke up and he needed to fight.

After walking for 15 or so minutes, Poe got to the spiral staircase in the middle of the cave.

Looking up he could see the stairs reaching the top of the cave and going even further reaching a new floor above the cave.

Taking his first step onto the staircase, Poe started his walk upwards. Trying to be as quiet as possible, while slowly making his way upwards was harder on the mind than he expected and when he only got halfway he needed to take a break to relax his mind.

To Poe's surprise, he made it all the way to the top and steeped onto the next floor without any troubles.

Breathing out in relief, Poe was about to take in the scenery of the new floor, when something hit him in the back making him fall onto the ground.

"Ouch… that really hurt"

Complaining about suddenly being hit in the back, Poe quickly realized that it was most likely a monster who did it.

Getting up on his feet again, Poe's two eyes looked towards the prime suspect.

The prime suspect looked back at Poe, seemingly also surprised that it ran into someone else, well all eight eyes looked back at him.

[Cave spider, lvl 8]

Feeling cold all of a sudden, Poe readied his stick ready to fight the spider that was the size of a dog. This was the first time Poe felt that the world was a cruel place.

Come on! God! Why did you make spiders so big?

Questioning the giant spider in front of him, Poe calmed himself down and looked towards his enemy as if the world was ending.

Poe was scared of spiders and has been so since he was small, because who really likes those things?

And so, Poe's first real fight began.